31 January. Jolly news for these snowy times - Rebellion are to release a 48-page Cor! & Buster Special on 17 April, featuring characters including Sweeney Toddler and Gums, drawn by the likes of Ned Hartley, Cavan Scott, Abigail Bulmer and Tanya Roberts. This will be followed by a reprint for Free Comic Book Day (4 May) entitled Funny Pages, featuring reprints from the archive.

29 October. Judge Dredd Megazine will include a bagged tribute to the late Carlos Ezquerra. "Carlos' death was a profound shock, not just to everyone at 2000AD but also to his fans across the world," says editor Matt Smith. "This small collection of his stories shows not just his evolution as an artist but also a sense of his incredibly consistent quality over more than four decades."

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Friday, October 13, 2017

Comic Cuts - 13 October 2017

I must be barking mad... but I've agreed to do another boot fair with my equally daft, but clearly persuasive, sister. It is going to be a busy weekend as Mel and I have tickets to see Jeremy Hardy at the Arts Centre on Saturday night and we want to fit in a trip to the cinema to see Bladerunner 2049 as soon as we can, although trying to find a free evening for it with our friends is proving to be as easy as nailing smoke to a ceiling.

It will be a nice (?) break from sitting in front of the computer. I'm maintaining my 1,000 words a day on the Fifty Famous Authors book. I've worked on a pair of related essays for the past couple of weeks which are at long last almost complete. One is finished and the other is waiting on some information that won't be arriving until next week. In the meantime, I've dived into another piece, this one a lot shorter, which will probably be part of batch two of essays... but it made for a change of pace after two weeks wallowing in the same subjects.

So we have an addition for the totalizer after a couple of weeks of zero movement. The word count is now 69,816 spread over 16 essays, so they're averaging around 4,350 words... which at a 1,000 words a day means I'm writing one every four days. I need to pick up the pace a little, or I won't be hitting fifty completed essays for some time. I am, however, almost ready to process the first batch of essays in order to put out the first volume of the e-book version of this project. The plan is for these to be around 50-60,000 word collections, somewhere between a quarter and a third the size of the print version.

How long I can keep up the pace without becoming distracted by the TV is another problem I'm going to be facing. There's a lot of shows appearing that I want to watch, and keeping up with them could take over my life, if I let it. Were currently only watching a handful of shows on UK terrestrial channels, many of them only recently back on our screens – The Last Leg, Have I Got News For You, Upstart Crow, W1A – while Freeview is providing us with our favourite, Taskmaster (which I cannot recommend highly enough... if you can get Dave, give it a try). We've recorded the latest Scandi-noir drama (Black Lake) and one of the crime dramas on the BBC (Rellik), which we'll catch up with shortly and we're watching only one other drama each week: Channel 4's fantastic Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams. The episodes to date have been fantastic and hopefully one in the eye for people who still insist that science fiction is all rockets and ray guns. Its good to see this arrive hot on the heels of The Handmaid's Tale – hopefully Electric Dreams will do well enough for the people who control the schedules to see that decent science fiction can find an audience.

The above I can cope with, even with the addition of QI and a couple of other shows that are starting up next week. It's the mad rush of shows coming out of the US that's the problem. We've been watching Star Trek: Discovery, The Orville (a Trek parody) and Marvel's The Inhumans for the past couple of weeks. But "Après nous, le déluge," as the French say: The Gifted, Gotham, Designated Survivor and Lucifer have already started and this week alone has seen the new season debuts of Mr. Robot, Supergirl, The Flash, DC's Legends of Tomorrow and Arrow with Mindhunter and Dirk Gently arriving tonight (Friday) and tomorrow (Saturday).

I think I am now officially attempting to watch too many shows. I still have a bunch of shows that I haven't gotten around to watching, including most of the previous season of Arrow and I've just started watching the first season of Designated Survivor. Only a year late!

Today's random scans were selected by doing a search for "bat" in my cover scans folder and then trying to pair up some of the results.

AVAILABLE NOW!Forgotten Authors Vol.1Click here for details and payment options"This is utterly fascinating: what a terrific accomplishment! It has held and engaged me. Authors who are only names have been documented and recorded, from the pathetic to the successful, and everywhere in between. This is incredible research, and I cannot begin to thank you enough for sharing it. I’m dipping into it with absolutely enormous pleasure."—Richard Bleiler"Recommended for anyone with an interest in the history of books, book publishing, obscure authors or even researching family history. Looking forward to Volume 2"—Amazon review.

AVAILABLE NOW!The Men Behind Flying Saucer ReviewClick here for details and payment options"Beginning in 1955, the Flying Saucer Review has been key to chronicling the appearance of Unidentified Flying Objects and the latest theories of why they have been appearing in our skies. A dedicated group of enthusiasts - amongst them an accountant, a publisher's editor, a test pilot, a novelist and a member of the House of Lords - were amongst those who helped put together this remarkable magazine. Who they were and how they came to work together makes for a fascinating tale, some of it as curious as the phenomena the magazine studied."

AVAILABLE NOW!Countdown to TV ActionClick here for details and payment options."The perfect compliment to my set of Countdown/TV Action" - Graham Bleathman."A wonderful trip down memory lane. Recommended" - Paul Simpson, Sci-Fi Bulletin"If you read Countdown as a child, you'll be fascinated by this account of its making ... indispensable." - John Freeman, Down the Tubes"The definitive history of the title" - Lew Stringer, Blimey!"I urge you to grab a copy and give Steve Holland a tip of the hat for the amount of hard work, research and love he's poured into making a book of information become an interesting story" - Barnaby Eaton-Jones, The Cult Den

Lion King of Picture Story PapersClick here to order"It's a great read in itself and has sent me back to the Lion comic to re-read some of my childhood favourites. The pictures are reproduced crystal clearly and even this old man can read the original art ... It's a gorgeous book and if we are snow-bound as the media has been saying for weeks, I have plenty to keep me amused this chilly January weekend!" - Norman Boyd.

Sexton Blake Annual 1941Click here to order"If you've been meaning to give Sexton Blake's adventures a try, this would be a great place to start. I've seen the actual annuals go on Ebay for three or four hundred bucks, so this is definitely a bargain too." - Singular Points.

Peter Jackson's London Is Stranger Than FictionClick here to order"The original books have been highly collectable for many years now, but finally they’ve been republished in a single volume from Bear Alley Books ... for the ridiculously reasonable price of £14.99. Do yourself a favour. " Christopher Fowler.

OUT OF PRINT!ArenaClick here for details and payment options"This book goes straight to the top of my large reading pile" - Graeme Neil Reid"With reality TV overload and the rise of the risque and the brutality of today’s society, this story still has a pertinent message for those of us who are willing to listen to it. In fact, I think the story is more relevant today than it was in 1979." - Colin Noble, Down the Tubes"The story is a fun read, but the star of the show is the art. Alcatena is a class act." - Hibernia Comics